TED Talk: Save the World by Playing Online Games

"I believe that if we want to survive the next century on this planet, we need...21 billion hours of gameplay every week. ... No, I'm serious." So says Jane McGonigal in a recent TED Talk. McGonigal is a game designer who studies gaming, cooperation, and how games can actually make a difference in the real world. Her thesis is basically that kids are already spending zillions of hours (specifically, 10,000 hours on average by age 21) playing games -- so why not use that game time to do something constructive? Her research indicates that games can influence real world behavior. McGonigal has actually built several such collaborative games, most notably World Without Oil, a game about an oil shortage, which apparently influenced its players to reduce real world oil usage for a period of years after the game ended. It's a hard idea to swallow (can playing games really save the world? Can world-saving games be as fun as World of Warcraft?), but McGonigal makes a fairly convincing case. If nothing else, this talk should spark a healthy debate -- there are sub-issues here like how much time we spend playing games, how games affect our real world behavior, and so on.

Interesting stuff discussed here: statistics on how much game time people (especially kids) are really getting, the invention of games, sheep-knuckle dice, how a famine led to the invention of dice games (according to Herodotus), saving an ancient culture by playing games, World Without Oil and how it actually changed players' behavior in the real world.

On the heels of International Colorblind Awareness Day, Mattel, which owns Uno, announced it would be unveiling a colorblind-friendly edition of the 46-year-old card game.

The updated deck is a collaboration with ColorADD, a global organization for colorblind accessibility and education. In place of its original color-dependent design, this new Uno will feature a small symbol next to each card's number that corresponds with its intended primary color.

As The Verge points out, Mattel is not actually the first to invent a card game for those with colorblindness. But this inclusive move is still pivotal: According to Fast Co. Design, Uno is currently the most popular noncollectible card game in the world. And with access being extended to the 350 million people globally and 13 million Americans who are colorblind, the game's popularity is sure to grow.

In less time than it takes some people to open a pickle jar, 15-year-old Patrick Ponce can solve a Rubik’s Cube. His total time of 4.69 seconds makes him the new holder of the world record for fastest 3-by-3 Rubik’s Cube completion, as highlighted by Compete (and seen in the video below).

Ponce achieved the impressive feat of dexterity at a tournament in Middletown, Virginia, on September 2. He takes the title from the previous Rubik’s Cube speed record holder, Feliks Zemdegs, who solved the puzzle in 4.73 seconds at a competition in Australia in December 2016.

But the teenager may not hold his new position at the top for very long: Expert Rubik's Cubers have been steadily lowering the speed record beneath the 5-second mark since 2015. And human competitors still have a long way to go before solving a cube in 0.887 seconds—that’s the record that was set by a robot in March of 2017.